A perfect day at Pukekura Park

 

Central Districts v Wellington, 50 overs, Pukekura Park, 25 October 2025

Scorecard

What if I’m wrong and there is a heaven, where we can while away eternity by selecting cricket teams of the passed to entertain us? My home ground will be Pukekura Park, New Plymouth (touring sides welcome). It is quite the most entrancing ground at which I have watched cricket. I was there at the weekend, for the first time in a decade or so.

The only change in the appearance of the ground in that time is that two of the three grass ziggurats that that comprise the spectator seating now have wooden supports on their vertical sections, as the photo shows.

When these were first installed the newness of the wood stood out somewhat uncomfortably, but they have weathered sufficiently to blend in well with the arboreal surround, and do not detract from the idyll whatsoever. I was on the sixth terrace up directly behind the sightscreen at the Park End of the ground, as perfect a view of the cricket as it is possible to have, with a view of the Tasman Sea adding even more to the wonderfulness.

The occasion was the opening of the domestic season, a 50-over game between Central Districts (CD) and Wellington. CD are the most itinerant of New Zealand’s provincial teams. This season they will play at four grounds: McLean Park in Napier, Fitzherbert Park in Palmerston North and Pukekura Park are spread across the lower half of the North Island, while Saxton Oval in Nelson is at the top of the South Island. This is logistically complicated, but means that matches are more of an occasion for the local cricket community than is the case in the bigger centres.

In these surroundings the quality of the cricket has little bearing on the level of enjoyment. The Old Trafford test of 1964 (Tom Cartwright 77-32-118-2) would have left delightful memories had it been played at Pukekura Park. In fact, this game had plenty of good cricket on a pitch where the balance between bat and ball was just right. With its short boundaries square of the pitch on both sides, estimates of par scores for the team batting first in 50-over contests start at 300 and rise quickly. Today, there were two green strips down the corridor of uncertainty on either side of the stumps. Assistance was available to bowlers, but required precision to gain access to it. Waver a little and the ball headed for the trees.

Wellington were not sharp enough to realise that the order of the day was more circumspection than is usual at this venue. McLaughlin being caught on the mid-wicket boundary in the third over of the day was an early indication of this.

Twenty of Jesse Tashkoff’s 21 came in boundaries before he nicked Tickner to slip in the fourth over. Tickner exploited the possibilities of the pitch well, but finished with only the one wicket at a cost of 55 from seven overs. He beat the bat often enough and with more luck could have had three or four, but bowled too many short deliveries when a good length was the best way of coaxing movement.

Tim Robinson (back from the international T20 side) and Gareth Severin put on 77 for the third wicket in 12 overs and it seemed that a Pukekura Park megascore was on the cards until Josh Clarkson came on to bowl. Clarkson bowls on the sharp side of medium pace and with considerable intelligence. Starting from the Park End he got movement both off the pitch and through the air. When he switched to the Sea End (I have no idea if those are the correct names of the ends but which is which is clear) he bowled more back of a length, without repeating the mistake of his quicker colleagues Tickner and Findlay by going all out short.

Clarkson took five of the remaining eight wickets that fell, reducing Wellington from 105 for two to 199 all out. In his first spell of four overs he took three for 13 including Nick Kelly and Tom Blundell, who had the same stump knocked out of the ground, though it was Kelly’s leg and Blundell’s off.

Clarkson was well-supported by slow left-armer Jayden Lennox, who invariably impresses in white-ball cricket, even if his inclusion here was at the expense of Ajaz Patel, one of only three to have taken all ten in a test-match innings. I am pretty sure that Jim Laker and Anil Kumble were never subjected to the indignity of running the drinks in a domestic game as Patel was here.

Lennox got Severin for 60 with the first apparently poor ball that he bowled, full outside off at which the batter thrashed and was well caught at point by Tickner. But was it a bad ball? Could it have been ploy to tempt a man who was eager to push on when the previous two overs had produced just five runs? That’s the frustrating thing about watching cricket. You don’t know what is actually happening out there.

Lennox is captain of CD in this form of the game and is to be complimented on staying on the attack, with close catchers present almost throughout the innings.

As the wickets tumbled Logan van Beek constrained his natural aggressive game in favour of marshalling the lower order until the loss of Snedden and appearance of Hartshorn at an ambitious No 10 made him decide that it was time for a hit. One of these blows cleared the road at the Sea End and pitched on the front lawn of a house opposite, though the size of the ground makes this less of a feat than at most places. At one time, if television was present the commentators were located in a truck parked in that same road outside the ground, peering over the wall like Kilroy.

CD’s approach was altogether more measured. After the early loss of Cleaver, charging at Dudding to be caught at backward point, Schmulian and Foxcroft put on 78 the second wicket, whereupon two wickets fell from successive deliveries from legspinner Peter Younghusband. Curtis Heaphy then joined Schmulian and contributed a calm, accomplished 35 to a partnership of 68. Last year, I watched Heaphey—then only 20—make 135 from 328 deliveries in the Plunket Shield to save the game against Wellington. He is a cricketer with old-fashioned talent, and he will play for New Zealand before long.

The loss of two further wickets within ten of the target meant that the margin of victory was four wickets, which makes it seem closer than it was, there being more than ten overs to spare.

Before setting off to the ground I was alarmed to discover that I had left what I call my Plunket Shield coat—the one that I have acquired to see me through Christmas in Canada—in Wellington, but I need not have worried. It was balmy to the extent that I even went sweaterless for an hour in the afternoon.

Pukekura Park is much more than the cricket ground, which occupies no more than five percent of the total area. There is a small zoo, an excellent tea room (I recommend the vanilla slice), a couple of lakes with ducklings parading in lines, a concert bowl, and as many shades of green as there are in nature itself. A number of families made a half-hour at the cricket part of their day out, including, I am pleased to say, my own. Mrs Scorecards dropped in along with her sister, brother, sister-in-law, and two nieces. We were sitting just behind the sole camera and microphone providing the YouTube feed, and eight-year-old Olive made a promising debut as a commentator. Wellington should take heed of her perceptive analysis.

It was a perfect day at the cricket.

 

 

 

 

The season ends; final thoughts

 

That the county season of 1975 finished as late as 16 September was a significant development in the scheduling of the English cricket season. Until then, the Championship had regularly concluded on the day before the Gillette Cup final, always played on the first Saturday in September. This extension seems to have been considered a bit too bold, as it remained the latest season’s end for ten years, until in 1985 it was a day later. In 1990 the last day pushed past 20 September, largely to accommodate four-day cricket. The following year, the Championship concluded on the 20^th, but that was followed by one and four-day contests between the champions (Essex) and the winners of the Sheffield Shield (Victoria). Rain cost Essex victory when they were two wickets short of an innings victory. That Merv Hughes was the top scorer for the Victorians suggests that they were treating the trip as a bit of a jolly. It has not been repeated.

It was another five years until the Championship went beyond the 20^th of the month, and it remained the exception rather than the rule. Only in 2005 did the last Championship game start after the 20^th, and only since 2013 has the last week in September become the regular finishing point for English cricket. Only once (since the foundation of the Championship at least) and for barely more than an hour, has October hosted county cricket, the Bob Willis Trophy challenge match between winners and runners-up in 2021.

In 2025, I write at the end of a wet week of disrupted county games (happily excluding the probable decider between Surrey and Nottinghamshire), including a shortened 50-over final. As usual when September is wet, there are complaints that it is unnatural to play as the leaves change colour, but the rain can disrupt any English month. Much of my cricket watching on visits to the UK in the past three decades has been in September and with the exception of 2019, it was idyllic. Twice I visited in April and froze on both occasions. Playing county cricket throughout September is fine by me.

In 1975, it was the week in which Leicestershire became county champions for the first time. A month out, four or five teams appeared to have a better chance, but they timed their run perfectly. It was a personal triumph for Raymond Illingworth, whose seventh season as Leicestershire captain this was. He had built the county into a winning unit in one-day cricket, the 55-over trophy earlier in the season being their third in four seasons. Yet on paper they were not one of the strongest contenders in first-class cricket. For one thing, their overseas fast bowler, Graham McKenzie, was playing one more year than was wise, and came seventh on the county’s wicket-takers list for 1975. They had no current England players, but were a line up of county pros most of whom were having one of their best seasons, plus the other overseas player, Brian Davison, who led the batters. They were superbly captained by Illingworth, who, at 43, came 15^th in both the national batting and bowling averages (though with a third of his appearances at the crease being not out).

One of the great sporting tales was rightly celebrated on its fiftieth anniversary: Chris Balderstone finished the second day’s play 51 not out. Earlier, the securing of a bonus point had given Leicestershire the Championship, but rather than join in with the celebrations Balderstone got in a car driven by Doncaster Rovers manager and was driven to the club’s home ground, Belle Vue, where he played the full 90 minutes in a one-all draw against Brentford in Division Four. The following morning Balderstone resumed his innings and completed his century.

Kent had their worst year of the seventies. In their other two trophyless seasons of the decade they got to a final (1971) or led into the final game of the Sunday League (1979). In ’75 the county went out of both knockouts at the first opportunity and faded away on the final month of both leagues. The heavy demands of the selectors was a partial explanation. Six players  to the World Cup, Underwood and Knott for four tests, Woolmer for two and Denness for one. Then we would never have contemplated that the county could have a season as bad as 2025, 29 points adrift at the bottom of the table.

News came this week of the death of Bernard Julien. Fifty years ago he was a World Cup winner, and had a good season for Kent around international appearances and injury, averaging 30 with the bat (despite often coming in at No 9) and 17 (40 wickets) with the ball in first-class cricket, including a five-for with spin at Folkestone.  He toured with the successful West Indies side in 1976 and had a more moderate year in 1977, after which he was released, possibly because those in charge felt compelled to make a sacrificial gesture of one Packer player, at least. Bernard Julien was a richly talented cricketer whose promise was never quite realised, but he shone along with the sun in the glorious summer of ’75.

When I last conducted an exercise like this—recording scores and news each day on Twitter (now also on Bluesky) with a weekly retrospective here on Scorecards—I had the feeling that I was, if not quite at the cutting edge of the digital revolution, at least no more than a day’s walk from it. A few years later and writing a blog seems akin to driving a car that needs a starting handle to shake it into life, or playing cricket on uncovered pitches. If I had any self-respect I should be doing a podcast, or on Tik-Tok, I realise.

Yet there remains an unsurpassed pleasure from turning thoughts and memories into words on paper or a screen and it is an exercise that I undertake primarily for my own enjoyment, grateful as I am for the occasional interactions with a very small cross-section of the discerning. It has been an excuse to enjoy again the writing of John Woodcock and Alan Gibson among cricket writers, and others such as David Lacey and High McIlvanney on football and Clive James’s TV reviews, all scribes who inspired my interest in words and how to use them when I first came across the posh papers at around that time.

For these reasons, I will probably do this again at some point, museum piece as it is. The following summer, 1976, was even sunnier and drier, and full of fine cricket, most of it played by the West Indies. I would like at some point to recreate an old-fashioned tour, playing the states before going into the test matches, or to go way back, perhaps to Kent’s first Championship year of 1906. If and when this comes about, I will try to restore more context in terms of what was happening in Britain and the world. There was less of this for 1975 than there had been for 1967, partly because the news was so much concerned with income policies and industrial action, which interested me at the time, but have become archaic and so take too much explaining to be of any use here.

As for 1975, the opening words of Norman Preston’s Notes by the Editor in the 1976 Wisden hold good.

Surely the season of 1975 will go down in the annals of English cricket as one of the best of all time.